Motor vehicle occupants are protected from high acceleration (high g) events, such as crashes, by primary restraints and supplemental restraints. Primary restraints are belts and buckles that secure an occupant to a seat, but allow limited motion. When a high g event occurs, an automatic locking restraint is actuated to prevent the belt spooling mechanism from spooling out any more belt.
Supplemental restraints include frontal and side inflatable passenger restraints (IPRs) or air bags, belt pre-tensioners, knee restraints and the like.
The pre-tensioner is actuated to take up slack from the belt when a high g event occurs. This actuation occurs about 0-5 ms after the high g event begins. The air bags are actuated about 5-10 ms or so later.
Typically, primary and supplemental restraints operate independently of one another. The decision of when to fire a pre-tensioner or an automatic locking restraint is dependent upon their individual response times to a high g event. Generally, the pre-tensioner actuates first to take up belt slack and the automatic locking restraint actuates thereafter. This results in a slackening of the belt followed by undesired spooling out of the belt before the automatic locking restraint actuates.
IPR actuation is generally controlled by a controller in response to a high g event, occupant weight and occupant position. For example, International Patent application PCT/US98/09845 discloses an air bag control system that controls air bag inflation responsive to the force exerted on a vehicle seat, tension sensed in seat belt, and proximity of the occupant to the inflator door. However, there is no provision to control the actuation sequence and times of a pre-tensioner and an automatic locking restraint and the actuation time of the air bag relative thereto.
An object of the present invention is to provide a load management system for the synchronous control of occupant restraints in a motor vehicle.
Another object of this invention is to provide a method of controlling the occupant restraints of a motor vehicle in a synchronous manner.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method of controlling the enablement and disablement of the occupant restraints of a motor vehicle.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a system that controls the enablement and disablement of the occupant restraints of a motor vehicle.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide a memory medium that contains a program for controlling a processor according to the method embodiments of the invention.